Midterm Blog Post

        Throughout the first half of the year in 21st Century Global Studies, I learned a lot of useful things that will help me in future situations. One of these things is screen shotting an image. This was especially useful in the creation of the team wiki. In the future, I may need to record something, or show someone else what I am seeing on my computer screen. Screen shotting also  is great to use when I need to explain something that even a paragraph could not. Now that I know how to screen shot an image, I will easily be able to do that by only pressing a few keys.

        Another very useful tool I became familiar with over the year was Windows Movie Maker. Our class was assigned to make multiple videos and without Windows Movie Maker, I would not be able to edit the videos I had to turn in. By using this video editor, I won third place in my section of the Flat Classroom Project. It helped make the point of my whole video clear, and because I learned so much about it this year I will have more experience working with it to improve my projects in the future
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Evernote is another useful tool I learned about this year. Evernote is like a notebook on a computer. It is very useful because I can access it anywhere I need, even on another computer I did not use to take the notes. I learned that I can even open it on the go by adding it as an application on my cell phone.

Diigo, another important web tool, was something that helped me immensely in this class. Diigo is a website that keeps things all in one place. Without Diigo, I would not be very organized. Diigo allows us to bookmark, or save a short cut to, web pages that seem important. This helped me because once I was finished researching, I was able to go back to Diigo to look through all of the information without having to start from scratch. This tool also lets you make things public, so that other users may benefit from your searches. 

Another very important technology tool that will definitely help me in the future is iGoogle. This tool also helped me stay organized, but in more depth. iGoogle lets a user customize their own page with gadgets and widgets that will benefit them. The widgets can range from the week's weather to the top stories in the news. I will be using iGoogle  in the future because it is customizable to a user's needs and keeps everything in one place.

         In this class I got to experience many situations that will be helpful to me in the future by teaching me how it is to work with a team. One experience that was very new to me was meeting with my team mates from the Flat Classroom project. These people were from different countries but we had to work together to make a team wiki. At times it became difficult because we could not always communicate well. But, it was very valuable and I will always remember working with the people I met.

        

        Another global learning experience was reading Thomas Friedman's book The World Is Flat. His book taught me a lot about globalization and global collaboration. It really opened my eyes towards the idea that the whole world can be brought together by the internet. This was another valuable global learning experience that will be useful to me in the future.

The third important global learning experience this year was video chatting live with students from other classrooms all over the world. This really showed how we can come together and learn, even though we are not in the same room. This was a very interesting experience and I also had a lot of fun during it.

Digital citizenship is very important whenever a person is dealing with the internet and other people. In this class, that is something that occurred a lot. Although it is fun meeting new people and learning from them, it is also important to handle yourself correctly. One thing about digital citizenship that I think is very important to remember is that you need to be careful with the people you are associating with and to be cautious of the things you do/post. Just because there is a backspace button, that does not mean that you can undo serious actions. This can be as simple as saying something rude to a person to as critical as giving out your last name to a stranger. I learned so much valuable information in just two marking periods of 21st century global studies and I am very excited to see what I will learn before the end of the year.